Lawrence Trial: Expert Links Suspect To Scene

A speck of Stephen Lawrence's blood on defendant Gary Dobson's jacket was wet when it got there and it probably got there during the murder, the Old Bailey has heard.

The tiny stain may have been splashed when a killer's knife was pulled out, or the knife touched the jacket, forensic scientist Edward Jarman said.

He said the blood had "soaked like a sponge" into the jacket's fabric.

Mr Jarman was one of a team of scientists who carried out a cold case review of the forensic evidence in 2008, 15 years after the murder of the 18-year-old in Eltham, south London.

Dobson and David Norris were charged with killing Mr Lawrence in 1993.

Mr Jarman told the jury how the tiny stain, measuring 0.5mm by 0.25mm, was revealed during a long microscopic examination of a grey bomber jacket belonging to Dobson.

Jurors were shown a close up of the stain next to a blown-up photograph of a 10p piece. Mr Jarman said the stain was the same size as one of a ring of tiny dots around the edge of the coin.

He said the blood showed a one-in-a-billion match to Stephen Lawrence's DNA.

Dobson's lawyer has said he is innocent and the jacket had hung in his wardrobe for many years and he had not worn it for a long time.

The defence suggest that the blood got there through contamination, possibly when other blood flakes got wet during forensic testing.

Mr Jarman said the most likely explanation was that the blood got there at the time of the attack and would have dried within a couple of minutes.

He also said he found more blood matching Mr Lawrence's in three fragments found in an evidence bag in which the jacket had been kept since the 1993 murder.

And he also discovered three fibres encased in another blood fragment, which must have been wet on the initial contact.

Dobson, 36, and Norris, 35, deny the murder. The trial continues.